Failed
by Laval
Summary: Fragile souls are easily broken. It only takes one mistake to destroy lives.


Disclaimer: I don't Evangelion or any of these characters. I'm not making any money  
out of this.  
  
Failed  
An Eva Fanfic  
By Laval  
  
  
"How can you say that you bastard!" she cried out, the hot tears streaming down her   
face, the fury of murder in her eyes along with the pain that fuelled it. The heavy   
steel trembled in her hands as she struggled to keep her gun level with her target. She   
was tired, exhausted and broken but her thirst for vengeance thrust her on. She could   
never rest in that house, never again.  
  
"The results were undesirable," Gendo repeated, his voice clinical and cold, even in   
the face of such drastic tragedy, "But the action was necessary. I shouldn't have to   
remind you, Major, that the safety of the pilots must be preserved."  
  
"You lying bastard," Misato spat, her detesting voice barely above a whisper, "This   
wasn't necessary, this was just about you."  
  
She broke down into tears. Just trying to express her thoughts conjured back all the   
memories and feelings of the past fatal hours. She managed to choke out the rest of   
her words as she kneeled on the office floor sobbing violently into her hands.  
  
"You never cared about their safety. You never cared about *their* safety at all."  
  
  
*********************************************************************************************  
  
  
*Earlier that day*  
  
"Don't you think you are giving this matter a bit much attention Ikari?" Fuyutski   
questioned his superior, the blatant chords of disapproval and almost disgust in his   
voice.  
  
"No," Gendo stated firmly as if he never truly listened to the question in the first   
place. He remained still, his tinted glasses and folded hands hiding any indication of   
what dark thoughts brewed in his mind.  
  
"But the pilots have been put under a lot of pressure," the old man insisted, almost   
pleading Gendo to reconsider, "It was inevitable that something like this would   
happen eventually."  
  
"That does not give me the luxury to ignore it," the commander replied, the tint of   
his glasses glaring with a soulless glow. Sometimes he was like a computer, only   
calculating results and never consulting anything else, but Fuyutski knew that   
something greater was spurring him on this time, and that was what scared him so   
greatly. The might of Gendo Ikari was being wielded by his blackened heart. There   
was no telling just how heavily the axe would fall.  
  
The sub-commander was about to protest further when he was cut off by the sound   
of the office door opening and the piercing footsteps approaching, the whisper of   
echoes gradually evolving into bold steps.  
  
The second child strode into the large room with a half-scowl on her face and an   
impatience in her stride. Her arms swung in vigorous pace with her march as her   
hair bobbed under the swaying movement of her taught movements.  
  
Asuka came to a defiant stop before the commanders. She knew exactly why she   
was here and she resented it. She held her gaze with her superiors, refusing to   
acknowledge the ridiculous reason she had been summoned, trying to betray the   
fact she felt slightly intimidated in their domain.  
  
She felt like she was on a tightrope, she understood that no matter the reason   
behind it this was serious and that she could stumble. As always she was confident   
that she would make it to the other side, she was strong, she could survive anything.  
  
But the huge daunting room seemed to echo the fact that the chance she might not,   
no matter how slight, was looming above her.  
  
"Pilot Soryu, you have been called here in relation to an alleged incident involving   
the yourself and the first child," Gendo began, almost succeeding to sound impartial,   
"One which resulted in physical harm."  
  
"I only pushed her," Asuka suddenly burst into a flurry of furious protest, "How was   
I supposed to know she'd screw her ankle? Plus its not like it's my fault! She had   
been pissing me off all day. She deserved it! And besides . . ."  
  
"Enough," Gendo interrupted harshly. The sheer authority of his voice was enough to   
silence even Asuka's protests, "There is substantial evidence to your resentment and   
aggressive attitude towards your fellow pilots."  
  
Asuka's fiery protest was quenched by the truth behind his words. She may be   
proud, even overly so, but she knew her own faults and it hurt to have them   
scrutinised in such a formal fashion.  
  
It also stirred unease in Fuyutski's heart. This was a build up, he knew this wasn't an   
investigation, Gendo was just trying to justify what was going to follow regardless.   
He feared that this clinical construction was leading to something far greater than   
he had first imagined.  
  
"I thought that you possessed the maturity to restrain these urges," Gendo   
continued abrasively, "but obviously I was mistaken. I am not prepared to let this   
behaviour continue. The problem must be eradicated."  
  
"But . . ."  
  
"No arguments pilot," Gendo snapped, his usually watertight mask letting a slither of   
the underlying emotion and anger seep through, "If you can't function as part of   
team then you will be removed from it. From now on you are removed from your   
position as pilot of Unit-02 and dismissed from Nerv. You will be deported back to   
Germany where your brutish behaviour can no longer affect the others."  
  
Behind his gloved hands Gendo smirked as his desired effects were displayed before   
him. Asuka stood silent, the look in her eyes showed unfolding panic, spiralling   
depths of despair and disbelief, a maelstrom of frantic fear and a dizzy freefall of   
shattered hope.  
  
It was the fall of a soul.  
  
Even Fuyustki, the one man who knew Ikari best, had been struck dumb by the   
ludicrous extent of Gendo's rash reaction. Behind his back he hid his rage in his   
clenched fists, infuriated by his own powerlessness.  
  
But the avenging commander was not finished yet. With the knife firmly lodged in   
Asuka's heart he gave it one final, flesh-shredding twist.  
  
"Rei will be given Unit-02."  
  
  
*********************************************************************************************  
  
  
I've failed.  
  
That was the only proper thought that orbited Asuka's scrambled mind. She lay on   
her bed throwing muffled tears into her soaken pillow, her body convulsing with   
every pulse of pain. She steeped in her sorrowful isolation, the barren loneliness that   
she had been exiled to, the desert that would form the rest of her life. The shattered   
remnants of her life gathered in her mind and beyond the anguish she tried to   
comfort herself by remembering happier times but all she achieved was to soak up   
all her she had lost.  
  
Her Eva.  
Her purpose.  
Her home.  
Her friends.  
  
Her family.  
  
All taken from her by the commander's little doll. Her life was less important than a   
grown man's plaything, his sorry little game. All she did was break a toy, not even a   
child would retaliate so bitterly.  
  
Asuka was bitter. There was no justice in it, no fairness or balance at all. He was   
giving that bitch her Eva, he was doing it just to spite her. That little doll was going   
to pollute the one thing that mattered to her, it was like being raped of the centre of   
your world by a soulless devil. It was like a smouldering spear through her heart,   
that one fact burned and cut her so much. Perhaps in better days the mighty German   
pilot may have responded in fury but she had no strength left to fuel her hatred, all   
she could do was suffer.  
  
She had clung to her unfair life like a warm blanket to soothe her from the cold truth   
of the world, she had been a victim but now she wasn't even that.  
  
She was just a ghost of someone who had once piloted Eva.  
  
She felt hollow, stripped of the essence that had filled her. Her life had always had   
its tears but she had filled them with Eva, she had covered the holes until they were   
nothing but thin cracks, rarely provoked.  
  
And now that had been torn away, the seals broken and the emptiness exposed once   
more. Her life seeped from those wounds and she had nothing left to seal the gaps,   
all she could do was lie on that bed and slowly bleed to death. It was like a disease,   
something inside her and no matter how tightly she held her herself she couldn't   
force it out.  
  
This disease corroded what was left of her broken heart, it ate away of the slim   
shreds of warmth that were left. She couldn't bear it any longer, she was being   
eaten alive by her own inescapable anguish, her wailing soul was bleeding a   
tormented death and she couldn't stand the pain.  
  
She wanted to feel at peace again.  
She wanted to escape her hurt.  
She wanted to be somewhere else.  
Anywhere else.  
  
She wanted to . . . .  
  
She scrambled to her feet and stumbled woundedly around the room searching for   
release. She had to escape, the world was closing in and it was just her, she didn't   
want to be alone, she didn't want to suffer in this maddening silence forever.  
  
In tormented desperation she turned to the only warm door left open, even if it did   
lie at the end of a dark, haunted corridor.  
  
"I'm coming Mama."  
  
  
*********************************************************************************************  
  
  
"What? Dismissed?"  
  
"I'm afraid so," Misato confirmed from the other end of the line, "I've just heard that   
Commander Ikari summoned her right after your sync tests and dismissed her."  
  
"Father," was all Shinji could manage in response, his anger and shame fully   
unleashed in his voice. Misato had tried to hide her dread in her voice from Shinji,   
she didn't want to panic him with the true fiendish weight of this, she didn't want   
him to know how grave this really was.  
  
"Is she at home with you?" Misato asked.  
  
"I think she's in her room," Shinji answered, his voice like a shameful confession,   
"I'm not sure, I'm just back. I'm sorry."  
  
"It's okay. I'm coming straight home," she continued, trying to keep the frantic   
urgency from her voice, "I want just to keep an eye on Asuka until I get back okay?"  
  
"Okay," he nodded, placing the phone back down and trying to absorb the horror of   
what he had just been told. He tried to sort out just what it would mean as he   
wandered distantly towards her room. Would Asuka leave? Would they get a new   
pilot?  
  
These thoughts were soul-shattering to Shinji but they paled to innocence in the   
face of what truly lurked behind that door. Unwittingly he stood at that threshold   
and knocked in search of permission to enter.  
  
No answer.  
  
That sprouted more sparks of fear in the core of his soul, it was another downpour   
into his sea of worry. For once he wished a string of venomous german curses had   
been hurled through the door. If anything the silence, the uncertainty was even   
more unbearable.  
  
Suddenly he felt strangely alone.  
  
It was like awaking in an empty house. The unexpected shock of being the only   
person left in your world and the wonder of where the others went, the feeling of   
isolation and the vulnerability it brings, the paranoia when even the droning hum of   
the abandoned TV begins penetrate your mind with waves of worry.  
  
Shinji began to panic. Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to be left alone, to   
cast off the world and escape from himself, but this was different, he felt   
abandoned. Frantically he knocked again.  
  
"Asuka, it's me. Are you there?"  
  
No answer.  
  
The mounting panic was beginning to dissolve his control. Retaliation for entering   
uninvited was beginning to shrivel away and all that was left to guide him was his   
nervous anxiety and the feeling that something had been disturbed, that things   
weren't as they should be.  
  
In the face of this Shinji did the only thing he could think of.  
  
He ran.  
  
He swung the door open and ran out of the sterile corridor, thoughtless of anything   
else he escaped his solitude and ran into Asuka's room, his original purpose lost   
somewhere in between.  
  
He shuddered to a dead stop.  
  
Her body swung in the ghostly glow of the moonlight, her face half-hidden in the   
shadowy shade of the lightless room. The open window breathed a gentle breeze in,   
turning her limp form slowly, rustling her drooping hair and filling the room with a   
chilling freeze, the cold touch of death. She floated only inches from the floor,   
the belt still taught as it hung from the ceiling, the imprint still fresh on the covers   
from where she had stepped off her bed and into the arms of death.  
  
She was coated by a still silence, the absence of sound like the loss of her extracted   
presence, another aspect of her erased life. It was a dead silence, there was no pulse,   
no beat, no sign of the spark that had once filled the room.  
  
Only Shinji's tortured screams as they were carried through the still night's air.   
  
  
*********************************************************************************************  
  
  
"Shinji, I'm home," his Guardian announced as she charged through the door,   
"Where's Asuka?"  
  
Shinji just sat there on the floor balled up tight hugging a pillow to himself like he   
was trying to hide from the world. He didn't even answer Misato's call, he couldn't,   
his shame wouldn't allow him to. His own father, how could he do that do Asuka?  
  
Asuka.  
  
It was only now that she was gone that Shinji began to realise the impression she   
had made on his life. Yes, she did shout and yell and hit but behind and beyond it all   
he had valued it as a friendship.  
  
It may have been a strained, backwards, malformed friendship but in his tragic eyes   
that was truly something he valued.  
  
And now it was gone.  
  
Taken.  
  
By his father.  
  
Amongst his storm of sorrowful loss and fraught distress it was the waves of shame   
that crashed the highest. He felt the guilt of association, his father's blood flowing   
through his veins like a poisonous stain.  
  
Father.  
Murderer.  
Rapist.  
  
Devil.  
  
That was inside him, that was what he was made of, the same filth as that bastard.   
He didn't want to be Satan's son. He found himself wanting to slice himself open and   
drain every last drop of that murder's mark from him if only it would make him clean   
of this bond that chained him to anguish and shame like a curse.  
  
"Asuka?" Misato called out, Shinji's melancholy quiet beginning to spread panic   
through her soul. She removed her jacket, placing it down next to Shinji and   
pensively began to investigate the eerily presceneless house.  
  
Her heart stopped dead in her chest when she discovered the morbid scene, Asuka's   
room transformed from a young girl's sanctuary to a dwelling of death. The ugly horror   
of it, the haunting parallels punctured her soul, every breath laced with the scent of   
sorrow.  
  
Her emotions began to churn in her heart as barbed gusts of raw feelings. There was   
no single emotion to feel, she was stuck in limbo between every aspect of herself. It   
was something that she could neither escape nor accept, she was only able to stand   
traumatised and absorb the piercing horror of the moment.   
  
The sound of movement from the kitchen reminded her of the presence of her other   
charge, the sound of someone rummaging in a jacket. She gasped in horror as she   
realised what was about to happen.   
  
"Shinji," was all she could say before the sound of a gunshot pierced through the   
soft night sky.  
  
  
*********************************************************************************************  
  
  
Now she lay sprawled on the office floor, the small hours of morning dwindling her   
strength with every passing moment. She no longer had the strength to follow her   
spite, all she could do was convulse in tears, the sobs wrenching her body like volts   
of thunder.  
  
"It's my fault," the commanders had to strain to hear her say, "I should have been   
there."  
  
She had come here in a fury of bitter rage and inconsolable anguish, she had come to   
seek retribution but she wasn't sure she had a right. It had been her responsibility,   
the children had been in her care and protection.  
  
She had cared for them, she truly had.  
  
She just never protected them.  
  
Not well enough.  
  
She had failed them, no matter how much emotion and effort she had poured into   
those two she had failed them and it was that fact that her whimpering mind   
couldn't flee from. She imagine two mourning mothers in heaven looking down at   
her now in scorn, disgusted that such a pathetic woman had neglected their tragic   
children.  
  
She had tried her best but when the stakes are so high it no longer matters. She had   
to accept the cost.  
  
"Now Major," Fuyutski began, his guilty soul breaking the shackles of rank and   
unleashing his human compassion for the broken woman in front of him but it was   
all too late as a sharp gunshot echoed across the office walls, a splatter of blood   
stained the floor, the sobs silenced.  
  
The old man stood in shock watching the thick pool of blood form under the Major's   
limp body. He turned to Gendo, mortified to find him still sitting at his desk, hands   
folded, eyes forward as if the tragic tortured suicide had never even happened.  
  
His soul began to stir in silent rage. The depths of Gendo's selfish uncaring disturbed   
even him. Fuyutski couldn't hold himself any longer.   
  
"I wonder what Yui would make of this," he thought out loud, "but I guess we won't   
have to wait long to find out."  
  
Although there were no outward signs of it he knew that last comment had enraged   
Gendo inside but Fuyutski didn't care, that was what he wanted, he wanted to   
deliver that bastard the pain and shame he deserved.  
  
"I warned you Ikari, I told you this would happen if you treated fragile souls with   
such contempt," he continued, his voice full of condescension and spite, "I always   
knew it wouldn't be the Angels, I knew Armageddon would be born from your   
soulless disregard."  
  
"Where are you going Fuyutski?" the commander called out calmly as his second in   
command began to walk from the room.  
  
"Home, where I can die in peace," the old man replied, the rage subsiding from his   
voice and replaced by grave sincerity, "We've been tried and failed. Nothing can   
change that now."  
  
"You are mistaken Professor," Gendo responded coldly, complete disregard of his   
threefold guilt in his words, "I still have Rei. The scenario will proceed as   
scheduled."  
  
"You're wrong Ikari," Fuyutski answered with a quiet power behind his words, his   
near whispered cutting the air with a harsh edge, "The Evas will refuse you and if   
she ever learns the truth then so might Rei."  
  
He turned around one last time, stared the devil in the face and spoke the   
inescapable truth that would linger in his soul until his death.  
  
"We have proved ourselves sinners. There is nothing left to do but repent."  
  
  
The End  
  
  
Author's note: This is my first Eva fic so I would really appreciate any feedback even  
if it's nothing flattering. Thanks for reading. 


End file.
